Michael Hatfield’s book covers common challenges and issues that impact the success of a Project Management Office (PMO). It highlights some common, often detrimental approaches that PMO’s take to advance project management and external factors that influence their overall success. The book also provides suggestions on how to overcome some of these challenges.

Overview of Book’s Structure

The book is divided into three parts:

Part 1: Tactics that Don’t Work

Describes the common pitfalls faced by most PMOs. There are 7 chapters that cover areas like using an authoritarian approach, training and certification to advance project management maturity, forcing a tool, prescriptive procedures and guides and using a graded approach to implement maturity.

Part 2: Tactics that Work

Describes the tactics that work in sustaining a PMO and making it successful. There are 4 chapters that cover topics like cooperation, implementing Earned Value Management (EVM) metrics etc.

Part 3: Hazards Along the Way

Describes the external challenges in a real life environment. There are 5 chapters that cover subjects like organizational politics, rival systems, responses that are on the offensive, etc.

The author succinctly ties all the parts together in the Conclusion section and provides a primer on EVM.

Huma Sohrwardy is the Principal/Consultant at HZ Technologies, LLC. She is an experienced IT practitioner with 20+ years of experience in the use and management of Information Technology as a means to delivering business goals and objectives.

Huma has extensive experience in the finance, manufacturing, healthcare and public sectors and has worked as a consultant for the Australian Federal Government. She holds a Master of Science degree in Computing and PMI’s Program Management Professional (PgMP) and Project Management Professional (PMP) credentials.

She has been a guest speaker at the Applied Project Management Forum at University of Texas Dallas. Her presentation on “PPM Implementation” can be accessed at the Jindal School Of Management website.

Editor’s note: This book review was the result of cooperation between the publisher, PM World Inc and the Dallas Chapter of the Project Management Institute (www.pmidallas.org). Publishers provide books to PM World, books are delivered to the PMI Dallas Chapter where they are given to chapter members who commit to providing a book review in a standard format; the reviews are published in the PM World Journal and PM World Library. Since PMI Dallas Chapter members are generally mid-career professionals, they represent the intended audience for most PM books. If you are an author or publisher of a book related to program or project management, and would like the book reviewed through this program, please contact [email protected].